Swindled by Oxbridge Nobs

...Like the Pentagon papers—a historical junkpile converted into a best-seller by the Nixon Administration's effort to bar the New York Times from printing it—Spycatcher will sit around unread for a decade and finally emerge in force at church and library sales...

...Enter the British press rampant...

...Reviewed by John P. Roche It seems a bit bizarre to review a work wholly lacking intrinsic merit, but the event provides an opportunity to explore the extrinsic factors that now have its author in Tasmania hiring an armored car to take his loot to the bank...

...Since Greengrass is a British resident, one may infer that he neglected to include his co-authorship out of respect for the Official Secrets Act...

...This is one of the strangest parts of a rather disjointed book, probably because Wright, evenif he felt unleashed from the Official Secrets Art, retains a healthy respect for the ferocious British libel laws...

...They missed a financial bonanza...

...If so far I have said nothing about Spycatcher, the reason is simple: In Gertrude Stein's phrase, "there's no there there.' Wright provides a number of enjoyableanecdotes about his expertise at bugging foreign embassies, his strong suit, but what else here is new...

...Of the Wilson charge I have some personal knowledge, because the question of the Prime Minister's integrity was raised in the 1960s when I worked in the White House...

...Some have alleged that Presidcnl Johnson was persuaded by the late James Angleton, director of counterintelligence at the CIA, that Wilson could not be trusted...

...The Soviets were fully engaged in Hungary, terrified about further risings in Eastern Europe, and lacked the unified leadership for any intervention...

...Even for the Aussies, who are prepared to believe the worst about the "pommies," this was too much: There was a spasm of hilarity that reportedly led to hospitalizations...

...De Gaulle's views on "les Anglo-Saxons" were set in concrete by 1942...

...His problem was, as we said in World War II, that he "was too longin the islands": He got obsessed...

...In sum, caveat emptor...

...Neither contention stands up...

...A wise Home Secretary, accepting the Scot's verdict of "Not Proven," would have shipped hi m out to be High Commissioner in St...

...Meanwhile Viking hastily published an American edition that soon became a major export to England (there is no ban there on the importation of Official Secrets), and a statutory analyst maintained the Act does not apply in Scotland...

...Amateurs have learned more from Le Carr...

...This is not the place to explore the exotic dimensions of James Angleton, except to note that it was not true (as Wright implies) that if you asked him for the time, he would go into the men's room, turn on the faucets, then look at his watch...

...Hollis was unquestionably a very unpleasant man and there were enough aborted operations in his time to make him suspect...

...In the first case, the Foreign Office supposedly found out exactly how Charles de Gaulle felt about Britain's application for membership in the European Economic Community...

...Wright's claim that the Egyptian intercepts uncovered Soviet military intentions in the Middle East is macropolitical nonsense...

...Following publication in Australia and the attendant publicity, Her Majesty's Government literally went—as they say down under—wonko...

...In one of his better characterizations, the President observed that Wilson "could sleep on a pretzel...

...Westminster could not have been surprised by his sandbagging the British application for EEC membership in 1963, or by his subsequent departure from the military side of NATO...

...2) A substantial group of MI5 officers, encouraged by the CIA to believe Prime Minister Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent, planned to destabilize his Labor Government...

...A case was brought to bar distribution that featured the dispatched Head of the British Civil Service, Sir Robert Armstrong, solemnly informing the High Court he knew nothing of MI5...

...Spycatcher does little more than highlight the author's animus toward "the Circus.' A product of class-conscious Britain, he is convinced the Oxbridge nobs heading MI5 never gave him his just deserts—indeed, that they swindled him out of his rightful pension...

...Then there are Wright's two big bombshells: (1) Sir Roger Hollis, the director of MI5, was a Soviet mole...

...To this group he adds an Oxford man, Sir Roger Hollis, of whom more later...

...in the second, Prime Minister Anthony Eden is said to have learned that the Soviets planned to intervene militarily against the AngloFrench-Israeli coalition in the Suez crisis...

...The Australian legal fiasco was obviously newsworthy, so journalists began to discuss not only the courtroom doings but the subject matter of this sinister volume...

...specialists have read Nigel West's (Rupert Allason) leaden The Circus: MI5 Operations, 1945-1972, various works of greater or lesser analytical merit by Chapman Pincher, and Christopher Andrew's splendid synopsis, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community...

...Frankly, this section, reflecting the entire work, reeks of paraIn Coming Issues William I. O'Neill on Russell Jacoby's "The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe' Hope Hale Davis on Toni Morrison's "Beloved" Robert Lekachman on Tip O'Neill's "Man ol trie House' noia—Wright, no less vulnerable than Angleton, caught the occupational disease...

...Both assertions are old, and unfortunately the evidence remains murky...

...Plans were made for serialization...

...Which still leaves open the extent of the conspiracy in MI5 to discredit the Prime Minister...

...Wright also suffers in extremis from a failing we all share: His work was not really appreciated...

...It was only after President Eisenhower pressed a cease-fire on the Western Forces that Nikita Khrushchev suddenly threatened a "hail of rockets...

...The Attorney General had injunctions issued under the Official Secrets Act to close that avenue...

...But Wright has at last got an offset for that stolen pension...

...From what LB J told me, however, Wilson was not one of "Mother's" obsessions...

...May be under Richard M. Nixon, who never shaved with Occam's Razor, the Agency took a more sinister view of Wilson, but I doubt it...

...The scenario is worthy of Gilbert and Sullivan: A shrewd British television personality named Paul Greengrass met Peter Wright, a retired MI5 (British Counterintelligence) officer who had collected injustices for ageneration, and ghosted his book...

...What a crew they were: Kim Philby and the other Apostles of the Cambridge Comintern patronizing humble talents while busily betraying their country...

...He feels his bugging the French Embassy in London in the late 1950s-early 1960s, and a similar exploit at Egyptian expense in 1956, had massive impacts on British foreign policy...

...At the moment some English papers are violating the injunctions, the Crown is running around furiously waving its mace, and Opposition MPs are memorizing Milton's Areopagitica...

...Incidentally, although Allason and Pincher were former intelligence officers and displayed far more dirty linen than Wright, their books were never put under the Of ficial Secrets interdict...

...Wright would probably consider it a masterstroke to install a state-of-the-art bug in the room where President Reagan takes a nap...

...Johnson held Wilson in contempt, particularly after the British in May 1967 welshed on a commitment to provide military assistance to our multilateral efforts to establish the "Red Sea Regatta" and challenge Gamal Abdel Nasser's blockade of the Strait of Tiran...

...Wright is presumably beyond the jurisdiction of the Crown...

...A clue is his merely passing reference to Lady Marcia Falkender, Wilson's longtime administrative assistant, whom the Laborite raised to the Peerage...

...Lucia...